Briefing: Sustainable Alternatives for Land-based Biofuels in the European Union

European countries are ramping up biofuel use in an effort to meet their obligations under EU objectives to decarbonise energy in the transport sector. But green transport targets for 2020 in the renewable energy directive (RED) and fuel quality directive (FQD) have largely served to incentivise damaging technologies, in particular unsustainable “land-based biofuels”.

Greenpeace, Transport & Environment, the European Environmental Bureau and BirdLife Europe have commissioned environmental research institute CE Delft to examine genuinely sustainable solutions for the decarbonisation of Europe’s transport energy sector. The report [1] examines a range of scenarios to meet the RED and FQD targets without or with significantly less land-based biofuels than currently in use, including conservative estimates of the potential of sustainable biofuels.